Toll Free Service (known as “Freephone” in other countries or “800 service” in the U.S.) allows people to call a business and reverse the charges so that the business pays for the call. Traditionally, “900 service” (known as “Premium Rate Services” in most other countries) allows a business to charge the calling party a premium price for placing a call to it. The business proposes that they have a good/service that can be delivered via telephone and offer the good/service to its clients in exchange for the client being billed directly on their telephone bill as a convenience to the customer. For example, suppose a business offers to provide car dealer's actual cost information by recorded message for the price of $9 if you call their 900 number anytime 24 hours a day. In this case, the caller will be billed $9 (a price set by the owner of the 900 number) for the call, after which there will be a revenue share between the provider of the 900-service platform and the owner of the 900 number (i.e., the business offering the good/service).
With the notable exception of North America, the standard method for billing cellular telephone calls is calling-party-pays (CPP). CPP refers to a billing arrangement in which a cellular subscriber may receive a call, and have the calling party pay the service charges so that, as with traditional landline services, the call is free for the called party to receive.
It is believed that the CPP method of billing encourages mobile users to leave their cellular telephones turned on such that the ratio of incoming calls to outgoing calls is roughly 1:1. Currently, the split in non-CPP areas (e.g., North America) is closer to 4:1 in favor of outgoing calls. Research suggests that switching to a CPP-based system will not affect the number of outgoing calls, but will materially increase the number of incoming calls. CPP systems help protect cellular subscribers by putting control of their cellular fees in their own hands. Currently, cellular subscribers have little control over who calls them, and are charged for all incoming calls, even those directed to the wrong number. In addition, people who visit the United States from countries where the standard for wireless service is the CPP system are often unpleasantly surprised to find that they have been charged for calls directed to them, including the international calls from their home system to the United States.
Several methods have been made to implement a CPP system in North America. One such method for implementing a CPP system is what is referred to as “number block-based CPP.” In this approach, landline carriers keep track of and bill for calls made by its CPP customers, which are segregated into separate number blocks, usually on the basis of a central office code. The landline CPP customers can dial a local number in their CPP central office code, which is then forwarded to the wireless carrier of the recipient. The call gets billed back to the caller by the landline provider since the caller is one of its customers. A portion of the proceeds is then forwarded to the wireless carrier. However, this approach, which has been successfully implemented in Europe, suffers from a number of drawbacks. First, the landline carrier can only bill its own customers. Calls from other carriers, including competing wireless and landline carriers, cannot be billed unless they have similar billing arrangements in place. Moreover, calls from outside the central office region cannot be billed due to the large size of the central office code database that would have to be maintained to recognize all potential CPP calls.
Although other approaches for implementing a CPP system have been introduced, they all suffer from significant drawbacks. It was widely believed that the only technical way to implement a CPP system in the United States is to have a nationwide standard, as was done with local number portability. At one point, the FCC requested that carriers implement a CPP system. However, the industry was not able to develop an acceptable standard. Accordingly, there is a need in the art for a system and method for providing a carrier-independent CPP system which overcomes such drawbacks.